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NVIDIA FleX is the new GPU accelerated particle-based simulation library. The core idea of FleX is that every object is represented as a system of particles connected by constraints. Such unified representation allows efficient modeling of many different materials and natural interaction between elements of different types, for example, two-way coupling between rigid bodies and fluids.

Interested developers may be pleased to hear that NVIDIA has already completed basic integration of FleX solver into Unreal Engine 4, and it can be freely obtained with one specific UE4 source code branch at GitHub.

Standalone FleX SDK and sample demo executable (as showcased below) are also included in the package.

To get access to the UE4 source code branch with FleX integration few steps are required:

Quite astonishing news are coming from Game Developers Conference 2015 – NVIDIA has just announced that latest PhysX SDK 3.3 is now available for free with full source code for Windows, Linux, OS X and Android. Source code release of APEX Destruction and APEX Clothing modules is also planned.

Previously, only binary distrubutions of PhysX SDK were available for free for commercial (Windows PC) and non-commercial (Linux, OS X, Android) use. PhysX engine for consoles if still subject of paid licensing.

This desicion will certanly help to push PhysX’s already wide adoption among developers even further and put an additional stress on competitive solutions.

Among various bug-fixes, this version also features support for GPU acceleration on Linux platform (CUDA-capable devices only) and reworked documentation.

PhysX SDK 3.3.2: Release Notes

GENERAL

Added:

The PhysXCommon/64.dll, nvcuda.dll and PhysXUpdateLoader/64.dll are loaded and checked for the NVIDIA Corporation digital signature. The signature is expected on all NVIDIA Corporation provided dlls. The application will exit if the signature check fails.

Add SDK 2.x back for mCloth and mParticles. Users can only simulate mCloth and mParticles in 2.x mode. And APEX will not be supported when 2.x mode. It means users cannot edit and simulate Clothing and Destruction assets when using 2.x.

Fixes

Fix: crash which happens when quiting 3ds Max with a biped Ragdoll scene.

Fix: bug that Clothing simulates wrong at first frame when system scale is not 1.

Fix: bug with APEX Debug Visualizer parameters.

Fix: bug that when LOD1 is default LOD, it may not allow to add another new LOD.

Fix: bug that Physical Mesh rollout could be too small when it is Custom type.

Fix: few bugs with Physical Mesh rollout of Clothing Modifier.

Fix: crash when loading .Rag files.

Fix: SDK warning message when it fails to output on unicode build because missing one virtual function.

Fix: Clothing Velocity control via Script.

Improve the simulation of dynamic ragdolls.

Make a switch to SDK 3 if creating APEX objects.

Support SkinMapActual for APEX Clothing visulaizer.

Improve sub-material handling based on Bug #9515: Getting multiple materials when coming back from PhysXLab to 3ds Max.

The NxUserRenderResourceManager’s surface buffer create and release virtual methods must be implemented by the user. They are only used by particular turbulence features, so if turbulence isn’t being used the implementation can be empty.

Starting with NVIDIA R302 drivers, application developers can direct the Optimus driver at runtime to use the High Performance Graphics to render any application – even those applications for which there is no existing application profile. The APEX samples now makes use of this “NvOptimusEnablement” feature to enable High Performance Graphics by default.

Debug info added to all PS4 builds except release builds.

Android sample builds now generate an APK. This requires some extra defines for Java and Ant. See the Android examples section of the sample documentation for details.

PhysX SDK 3.3.1 release is mostly focused on various bug-fixes and optimizations.

PhysX SDK 3.3.1: Release Notes

GENERAL

Added:

The friction model can now be changed after scene instantiation with PxScene::setFrictionType. The friction model can also be queried with PxScene::getFrictionType.

Changed:

PxDefaultSimulationFilterShader now supports particles and cloth as well.

PxSimulationFilterCallback: the provided actor and shape pointers are now defined as const. Note: this is no behavior change, it was never allowed to write to those objects from within the callback.

The PxTriangleMeshFlag::eHAS_16BIT_TRIANGLE_INDICES and PxTriangleMeshFlag::eHAS_ADJACENCY_INFO enums have been deprecated. Please use PxTriangleMeshFlag::e16_BIT_INDICES and PxTriangleMeshFlag::eADJACENCY_INFO instead.

Removed following functions from the API for platforms which do not support CUDA: PxGetSuggestedCudaDeviceOrdinal, PxCreateCudaContextManager, PxLoadPhysxGPUModule.

PxShape::getMaterialFromInternalFaceIndex will now return a NULL pointer and produce a warning for input faceIndex value of 0xFFFFffff. This change only applies to mesh and heightfield shapes.

Fixed:

Fixed concurrency issue on windows. Calling PxScene::simulate on multiple scenes concurrently may have caused a deadlock. This only happened if the scenes shared a single PxCpuDispatcher and the dispatcher was configured to use one worker thread only.

Epic Games has announced, that their highly anticipated Unreal Engine 4 is now available for developers, with a very friendly licensing model (which even includes full C++ source code) – only $19 per month, plus 5% of gross revenue from any commercial product.

Advanced physics system in Unreal Engine 4 is based on PhysX 3 (SDK 3.3 already or very soon, as far as we know), including out-of-the-box integration with APEX Clothing and APEX Destruction modules.

Warface, free-to-play online shooter, powered by CryEngine and developed by Crytek, will soon be enhanced with GPU accelerated PhysX and VisualFX effects – according to NVIDIA.

PhysX (APEX) Particles module will be used for impact debris effects on “concrete, grass, soil, wood, sand and the like” surfaces, while NVIDIA (APEX) Turbulence module will provide “simulation and rendering of physically correct smoke, dust and other fluid dynamics effects“. As the result:

Engine exhaust, smoke from explosions, dust from falling debris and spinning helicopter rotors can interact with the rest of the environment, both static and dynamic. Combined with PhysX particles, Turbulence provides a 1-2 punch of dynamism and realism.

As interesting note, it seems that NVIDIA as expanding the strategy of providing GPU accelerated PhysX effects in titles without native (core-physics) PhysX SDK integration, which potentially means that they can be adopted by any game or engine. Combined new core-PhysX integrations (such as UE4 with default PhysX 3, Clothing and Destruction implementation), such strategy can yield positive results on the amount of GPU PhysX titles.